Goodbye Windows: China to create home-grown OS based on Ubuntu

Ubuntu maker Canonical has signed a deal with the Chinese government to create a new version of Ubuntu. For China, this is widely seen as an attempt "to wean its IT sector off Western software in favour of more home-grown alternatives," the BBC reported.

In other words, it's an attempt to move from Windows to Linux. According to NetMarketshare statistics, Windows has 91.62 percent market share on the desktop in China, compared to 1.21 percent for Linux. The other 7.17 percent is OS X.

China is developing a new reference architecture for operating systems, based on Ubuntu. The Chinese version of Ubuntu—called Ubuntu Kylin—will be released next month in conjunction with Ubuntu's regular release cycle.

"Ubuntu Kylin goes beyond language localisation and includes features and applications that cater for the Chinese market," Canonical said in its announcement. "In the 13.04 release, Chinese input methods and Chinese calendars are supported, there is a new weather indicator, and users can quickly search across the most popular Chinese music services from the Dash. Future releases will include integration with Baidu maps and leading shopping service Taobao, payment processing for Chinese banks, and real-time train and flight information. The Ubuntu Kylin team is cooperating with WPS, the most popular office suite in China, and is creating photo editing and system management tools which could be incorporated into other flavours of Ubuntu worldwide."

This won't just be a desktop operating system. Canonical said "future work will extend beyond the desktop to other platforms" such as servers, tablets, and phones. To work on the software, Canonical and China have set up a joint lab in Beijing to host engineers from Canonical and Chinese government agencies.

166 Reader Comments

As a Chinese, I really welcome this to improve the user side tools and provide a better platform to disseminate the use of Linux, and provide more opportunity for Mainland based Chinese coders to participate and develop useful apps.

This will benefit hundreds of millions of Chinese people.

But seems all you guys can do is recycle really tired negative stereotypes and question the ethics of Canonical as if this would make them some kind of toadies of the wicked, evil Chinese government and lead to repression rather than giving people useful tools.

Sad. Unimaginative.

Now let's see how long it takes for the champions of free speech here to down rate my criticism to oblivion, I'll be really surprised if it doesn't happen.

BTW ... it's really interesting to see Chinese people make Android the dominant mobile OS in China despite Google's abandonment of it's Chinese users and crappy attitude, but I think this says something about how we would accept and promote good ideas from elsewhere despite politics and short-sighted vision on Google's part.

Linux will finally dominate market share, and all it took was the backing of a totalitarian government.

Jokes aside, if this actually catches on outside of government, people will have much more secure systems--since the majority of Windows installs in China are pirated and malware-laden. That said, one wonders what kind of back doors and monitoring capabilities will be included with this OS.

So whatever happened to Red Flag Linux? Why didn't that make more impact in China, and why would Ubuntu do better? Is the goal just to switch from RH to Ubuntu as the "parent" distro?

Red Hat is more dominant in the corporate base of Linux users, Canonical more in the internet and individual user space including, increasingly, the mobile space.

As a user platform, Ubuntu is much better in my opinion, and the new (alpha) mobile phone platform looks really good although not in use yet.

Well, Unity is still an abortion of a UI, but it's easy enough to install KDE (or just use Kubuntu instead). But yes, the robust support and general "it-just-works-iness" of Ubuntu as a baseline, and the penetration of the .deb package format, is great from an end-user perspective and a developer perspective.

Is there anything that would prevent them from forking and closing off the source? Not saying this is what they would do but what's the reach of the GNU and similar open source license in a country like China?

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

Calling the US a quasi-dictatorship is moronic. Its a democratic republic. It is also the foremost superpower in the world which ends up responsible for dealing with a lot of messes that the EU is too lazy to fix, as well as paying for the defense of much of the western world.

The number of people that the US has in illegal detainment is fairly minimal, and there's constant grousing over the hundred-odd people situated in those circumstances.

But of course, if you only read propaganda...

More seriously, this is interesting but somewhat troubling news. China is a repressive country and you can bet they'll build in some controls into the OS if they can. We'll see if it actually pans out though; there's a reason why people use Windows.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

Calling the US a quasi-dictatorship is moronic. Its a democratic republic. It is also the foremost superpower in the world which ends up responsible for dealing with a lot of messes that the EU is too lazy to fix, as well as paying for the defense of much of the western world.

The number of people that the US has in illegal detainment is fairly minimal, and there's constant grousing over the hundred-odd people situated in those circumstances.

But of course, if you only read propaganda...

More seriously, this is interesting but somewhat troubling news. China is a repressive country and you can bet they'll build in some controls into the OS if they can. We'll see if it actually pans out though; there's a reason why people use Windows.

Unfortunately, most of the US numbers are LEGITIMATE detainment, or at least they're facially legitimate laws that the people in prison actually did break to be put there. Whether or not they SHOULD be illegal is another story, but due process was involved and the laws are technically constitutional and don't violate any recognized human rights; the number that are illegitimately detained (e.g. guantanimo, the unconstitutional indefinite detention without charge or trial that the NDAA2012 allows, etc.) is extremely low as compared to places where mere political dissent can have you disappeared or killed. The current US laws are at that point, but haven't been used that way SO FAR (read: it hasn't been done yet, but it's the direction it's heading).

The cheapest copy of Windows 7 in China costs over 400 yuan while a Ghost image of Windows XP on a DVD costs 15 yuan. China probably has the world's largest number of Windows XP installs by now... mostly pirated copies.

I think it's a good thing that Ubuntu and Linux are being promoted in China because that would hopefully reduce the number of malware-ridden Windows PCs that don't have the latest patches. Anti-malware solutions by Tencent and 360 for Windows don't exactly inspire confidence.

On the other hand, I hope the Party's Publicity Department and MIIT don't try something ridiculous like the Green Dam. The open source nature of Linux could allow them to install a backdoor but it also means users can find and remove it, if it exists. I don't think using Linux would make it easier to circumvent the Great Firewall because the issue is with ISP routers that connect China to the rest of the Internet, and ISPs are getting more sophisticated at detecting and blocking VPN and encrypted connections.

Maybe the only way to bypass the Great Firewall is to avoid it entirely by using satellite connections or long range wireless over the border...

They say they want to. It would make sense for what we all think they want to do. But the reality is like the first bluff of going "All Linux" was spend 10 years ago. They wanted a discount on Microsoft products. I'm guessing they want another discount.

While this is partial true, you forgot the $300,000,000 MS dropped on the Chinese political leadership.Not 300 million in discounts but literally 300 million in the pockets of the ruling politicians. So yes, they want discounts, but I am betting the new leadership wants a chunk of change as well.

This is an interesting development and a huge deal for Canonical (and desktop Linux). China is an enormous market.

Xiao-zhi wrote:

The anti-Chinese bias on this thread is really appalling.

As a Chinese, I really welcome this to improve the user side tools and provide a better platform to disseminate the use of Linux, and provide more opportunity for Mainland based Chinese coders to participate and develop useful apps.

This will benefit hundreds of millions of Chinese people.

But seems all you guys can do is recycle really tired negative stereotypes and question the ethics of Canonical as if this would make them some kind of toadies of the wicked, evil Chinese government and lead to repression rather than giving people useful tools.

Sad. Unimaginative.

Now let's see how long it takes for the champions of free speech here to down rate my criticism to oblivion, I'll be really surprised if it doesn't happen.

It's about the mainland Chinese government, not the Chinese. It's still kind of silly, but the PRC government =/= "the Chinese."

Xiao-zhi wrote:

Actually, the USA has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Maybe you should check a few facts. By comparison, China is ranked 123.

No one here will deny that is a huge problem and many will agree that it's a sign that democracy in the U.S. is in trouble.

But to turn the tables on you: the U.S. executed 43 people in 2011. The PRC executed 2000+.

Furthermore, your reasoning is flawed. Is the U.S. screwed up? Yes, but that doesn't mean that the PRC isn't more screwed up.

As a Chinese, I really welcome this to improve the user side tools and provide a better platform to disseminate the use of Linux, and provide more opportunity for Mainland based Chinese coders to participate and develop useful apps.

This will benefit hundreds of millions of Chinese people.

But seems all you guys can do is recycle really tired negative stereotypes and question the ethics of Canonical as if this would make them some kind of toadies of the wicked, evil Chinese government and lead to repression rather than giving people useful tools.

Sad. Unimaginative.

Now let's see how long it takes for the champions of free speech here to down rate my criticism to oblivion, I'll be really surprised if it doesn't happen.

BTW ... it's really interesting to see Chinese people make Android the dominant mobile OS in China despite Google's abandonment of it's Chinese users and crappy attitude, but I think this says something about how we would accept and promote good ideas from elsewhere despite politics and short-sighted vision on Google's part.

You are either intentionally or unintentionally conflating two separate issues; anti-Chinese sentiment and anti-Chinese Government sentiment. They are clearly not the same.

BTW ... it's really interesting to see Chinese people make Android the dominant mobile OS in China despite Google's abandonment of it's Chinese users and crappy attitude, but I think this says something about how we would accept and promote good ideas from elsewhere despite politics and short-sighted vision on Google's part.

Google abandoning Chinese users? More like it didn't want to play ball with the Party's censorship requirements and bend over like Microsoft and Yahoo. Do note that Android phones by any manufacturer sold in China don't include any Google services as per government decree... you have to root them to get Google stuff installed.

This could be a good thing. They could end up funding improvements to application installation capabilities as well as the user interface. If they could get most application setup to be as simple as on the Mac they could blow Windows out of the water. The main reason Apple doesn't have a much larger market share in homes (and to some extent businesses) is that they are too expensive to buy hardware from compared to competitors and they prevent the use of their OS on non-sanctioned hardware.

BTW ... it's really interesting to see Chinese people make Android the dominant mobile OS in China despite Google's abandonment of it's Chinese users and crappy attitude, but I think this says something about how we would accept and promote good ideas from elsewhere despite politics and short-sighted vision on Google's part.

Google abandoning Chinese users? More like it didn't want to play ball with the Party's censorship requirements and bend over like Microsoft and Yahoo. Do note that Android phones by any manufacturer sold in China don't include any Google services as per government decree... you have to root them to get Google stuff installed.

Actually, the USA has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Maybe you should check a few facts. By comparison, China is ranked 123.

Yes. We also have a far higher crime rate than China does, and a subpopulation which commits a disproportionate percentage of our crimes (over 50% of homicides in the US are committed by a group comprising 1/8th of the population). The US's high incarceration rate is a result of the US's crime rate, which has fallen dramatically since sentencing has been increased - as the number of people incarcerated has risen, the crime rate has fallen.

Roughly 20% of our prisoners are in jail for drug-related offenses, meaning that the other 80% of our prisoners are not. We have only the hundred-odd Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been held illegally. This is rather different from the situation in China, where far more people are incarcerated due to their political activism.

Gorgias wrote:

No one here will deny that is a huge problem and many will agree that it's a sign that democracy in the U.S. is in trouble.

Its realy not a huge problem and isn't a sign of democracy being in trouble at all; in fact, that's utter drivel.

The cause of our high incarceration rate is that we dealt with our high crime rate by locking people up. It was effective; the US boasts a lower crime rate than much of Europe. The only category in which the US has a "high" rate is homicides, but, again, 1/8th of the population is responsible for over half of that statistic; take away that subpopulation and our homicide rate is only a third higher than that of Canada, which isn't great but clearly isn't totally ridiciulous either. Many "civilized" countries have higher violent crime rates than the US does as well.

The Asian countries boast massively lower crime rates than any Western nation does as a result of their culture. China, Japan, and Korea all have much lower crime rates than any Western country.

Xiao-zhi wrote:

But seems all you guys can do is recycle really tired negative stereotypes and question the ethics of Canonical as if this would make them some kind of toadies of the wicked, evil Chinese government and lead to repression rather than giving people useful tools.

Mao killed more people than anyone else in the history of mankind, and the Chinese government is quite repressive and unfriendly. Thus people in the west are naturally suspicious of it, and with good reason. We don't trust our own governments; what makes you think we'd trust yours?

Jokes aside, if this actually catches on outside of government, people will have much more secure systems--since the majority of Windows installs in China are pirated and malware-laden. That said, one wonders what kind of back doors and monitoring capabilities will be included with this OS.

As opposed to the backdoors and monitoring capabilities that said malware installed on most Chinese PCs?

Politically it solves the piracy issue with the US over Windows and MSOffice because Ubuntu is free and can not be pirated.

That depends on your point of view. Some people take the view that if anyone anywhere in the world doesn't follow US (or WTO etc, or whatever specific perspective they have) intellectual property law and use software without a licence, then they are pirating.

So if China branches Linux and makes it closed source, some people would see that as pirating.

Other people would see national sovereignty as paramount, as if China (or the US) wants to implement it's own IP regime, with whatever exceptions and limitations it wants, then it should be able to do that within it's own borders.

I think there is an exception in US IP law that says the US military can use any IP without paying for it, or even acknowledging it.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

I think this post shows the failure of the voting system on this site. A blatantly biased and almost racist post gets reader favourite.

What does 'almost racist' mean? Either it's racist or it's not, and I'm not sure that 'racist' means what you think it does. The article is about a deal between Canonical and China. China is a country, not a race, and contains many ethnic groups. Yes, his post is 'biased' in that it represents his particular opinion, which may or may not be a valid one, but that's the nature of a message board on a public website, I'm not sure what else you would expect.

Linux will finally dominate market share, and all it took was the backing of a totalitarian government.

Jokes aside, if this actually catches on outside of government, people will have much more secure systems--since the majority of Windows installs in China are pirated and malware-laden. That said, one wonders what kind of back doors and monitoring capabilities will be included with this OS.

You raise an interesting point. Linux (and OS X) avoid being targeted by malware developers, to some extent, because they are a small target.

Roll forward 5 - 10 years when Linux is dominant in China (and gains consummate adoption elsewhere), and now Linux has become a really big target.

It will be interesting to see how much China wants a secure OS for it's government, and how much it wants to facilitate national security based search and monitoring.

Maybe they will just start coding in Chinese and no western hackers will be able to understand the code base (joking - I know it's trivial to translate source code, although not so much for comments and documentation).

The reason for this, is because the US recently announced they would retaliate with cyber attacks or create special units for cyber warfare.

So China wants to move away from US software. This means more or less that the government was aware and completely knows they are behind some sponsored state attacks. This is just one more proof to it, now they want to try get as many Chinese users off from Windows, which can be potentially used against them, in some cyber-war, all MS needs to do is send some update and they control all systems in China.

Bad for Ubuntu, great for the rest of us. At least all system administrators now will only need to block or tag users with Ubuntu as suspicious and we are rid of attacks, spam and bonnets for good. If China uses mostly another OS they will do us all a huge favor but letting us classify Chinese computers and traffic separated from the rest of the net.

Bad for Ubuntu because their OS is going to go to hell, after Ubuntu is mostly used for malicious traffic. Im very sorry for generalizing, but their government is a joke when it comes to fight digital crimes online. Bank wires are send to China, Spam, Attacks, Child Porn, you name it, their government does absolutely nothing to punish or investigate this groups that most of the world considers Chineses internet traffic now to be crap. This means they are hurting their own legal companies and population that use Internet for good reasons by not cracking down on this activities.

On another part, is this is actually great to get rid of all this pirated and non patches systems. Maybe all their systems are going to be more secure vs running XP pirated.

Interesting -- currently Linux users are under the same "shield of obscurity" that protected Mac OS for such a long time. I wonder if I'll have to install Avast and Malwarebytes on my Mint box in 5 years.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

I think this post shows the failure of the voting system on this site. A blatantly biased and almost racist post gets reader favourite.

What does 'almost racist' mean? Either it's racist or it's not, and I'm not sure that 'racist' means what you think it does. The article is about a deal between Canonical and China. China is a country, not a race, and contains many ethnic groups. Yes, his post is 'biased' in that it represents his particular opinion, which may or may not be a valid one, but that's the nature of a message board on a public website, I'm not sure what else you would expect.

His opinion, particularly about Intellectual property showed a very US centric viewpoint. The fact that it is a reader favourite shows the political bias on this site. On a technical website why does a politically biased post become reader favourite when it had no technical points. I didn't think once about the politics involved when I read the article, but clearly on an American website that's the first thing the readers jump to when they hear mention of China.

i suppose this is because Microsoft are always complaining about China using cracked versions of windows. i guess now Microsoft will be complaining that no one, not even the Chinese think Windows is worth bothering about and are going their own way. perhaps if they had priced things accordingly, this situation would not be evolving. people/companies/countries will only put up with having shit chucked at them for so long. sooner or later, they will rebel. looks like that time is now as far as Microsoft is concerned!

i suppose this is because Microsoft are always complaining about China using cracked versions of windows. i guess now Microsoft will be complaining that no one, not even the Chinese think Windows is worth bothering about and are going their own way. perhaps if they had priced things accordingly, this situation would not be evolving. people/companies/countries will only put up with having shit chucked at them for so long. sooner or later, they will rebel. looks like that time is now as far as Microsoft is concerned!

The problem is not Microsoft, is Chinese authorities. Microsoft just happens to be the biggest software vendor that complaints. Do you think all those Adobe products in China are licensed? How about all other software? The point is that all software in China is pirated because their government does not care one bit since most of this software's are not chinese made. Now if its software developed in China, then their crack down on pirated software because it hurts their own interests.

Double standards. The minute China starts to develop something, unique products, software, etc, they are even worst than the West regarding to protect their intellectual properties, but if there foreign, its ok to pirate them. They welcome any source of funds "into" China with open arms, but any source that would go "out" they try to block or stop. Its a leech system. Paying licenses to Microsoft or software is money out of China, so they block it or don´t care, they are not going to work to make a US or European company richer and cracking illegal software is just doing that.

They're fairly core features in Linux; it doesn't matter how barebones you go, you'll have SSH.

Um, what? No. In fact, if you install Ubuntu Server from a standard medium, you won't have SSH unless you explicitly check a box that's off by default. (Which pretty much everybody does, but the point remains, SSH is off by default.)

I wonder if this is a power-play by China to try to get more control of the electronics market.

They already have cheap manufacturing ... computers, phones, electronics in general. All they need now is their own cheap OS to slap on it.

Ubuntu was working on a unified OS ... if China could fund Canonial in a big way and provide preferential treatment to Canonical's ideas of making smartphones, tablets, etc with Ubuntu ... we could see a huge push of Ubuntu-unified devices coming from Chinese companies in the near future.

This could also be a way to get control of the Chinese digitial underground. There's a huge market for knock-off and ripped software ... Windows included. I think they're concerned about folks in their country sticking with some WinXP knock off they bought for $1 at a market. If they could ween folks off that crap with a free OS a) they could "harden" their country against future malware attacks exploiting old software that's no longer supported, b) obviously their OS would be riddled with back doors letting them monitor their citizens.

Basically China is just a large business organization still parading under the guise of communism. Every thing they do is business-related. This could be a hit or miss for Canonical.